Newbie (very) question

Derek wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@gwinn.us:

I was kind of surprised no one else had mentioned it. But then again, of course, this is rfd.tea, not rfd.tisanes...

I need to try some of those. I've only tried the red (I guess) rooibos. I *did* try some "yerba mate carnival" out of curiosity, but find it kind of ghastly.

Ah, the Keemun may be helping my brain already. LTS = "local tea seller"?

Elsewhere in this topic, Joseph Kubera posted "Nowadays I am so absorbed with camellia that I seldom drink them", referring to tisanes. I suppose it's the same for me. I'd plumb forgot that I have some of the red bush stashed away. So I'm grateful for Dave's inquiry, because it reminded me, and I truly enjoyed my rooibos last night.

Now to round up some honeybush.

fLameDogg rose quietly and spake the following:

Well, I had ignored this thread for a couple of days. But since it kept growing, I figured something interesting must be going on.

I'm not a big mate fan. I've done the whole gourd and bombilla thing. It just doesn't do anything for me.

I did a supply run to the tea shop today. I picked up about 6 different types of teas, including an orange rooibos (flavored with real orange pieces), and a Kimberly Melange rooibos (flavored with a bunch of stuff).

They've also got a bourbon flavored rooibos that I just don't like much.

seller, shop, salon. Whichever floats your boat.

I've got the water heating up right now. :)

Ditto. My local shop doesn't stock it.

Space Cowboy rose quietly and spake the following:

Well, "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Tea Saints" just sounds silly.

I could have sworn that I was NOT the first person to use LTS to abbreviate "local tea shop" but a Google search seems to indicate otherwise. I guess I shouldn't abbreviate when no one else knows what the heck I'm talking about.

Then again, most people typically have no idea what the heck I'm talking about.

Yes, I did. And replied this afternoon around 5:00 (Central US).

Dave snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com'

Man. You make me miss Russia, and I've never been there. :) How did you leave?

Dave snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com

Sorry. My mistake. It's just called "The Tea Ceremony."

I am reading it, but I am not satisfied with only that. Thus my questions.

Found a Japanese lady here in Houston who teaches the Tea Ceremony at a local restaraunt (Urasenke school). Also found a handbook (volumes 1 & 2) of the Urasenke school, which I will probably get. That's a start.

Dave snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com

"Brisk." Okay. It is just barely strong enough for me, and I feel it is actuall a little weak, but that is the best I can do with my current pot and teaball. Still, it satisfies. :) Guess that's what matters.

Dave

Man, after hearing so much about rooibos I've got to find a source. Thanks.

Dave

Dave rose quietly and spake the following:

If no where else, my local tea shop has an online shop as well. You can get it from them. They've got 5 different types listed on the site.

I'm sure there are other sites which sell it. I just tend to buy locally. :)

I've always used local tea shoppe for the European flair. Never thought I needed to protect it with call letters. Mine is about mile and half away. Across two busy intersections but otherwise enjoyable walk through commercial area with sidewalk. Not bad for living in a metro area where you need MapQuest to find it and if you live in any other quadrant forget it. I usually drive because Walmart is another half mile and I'm willing to push a shopping cart but would probably get arrested by the city police because it is an expensive SUV commute community and nobody walks anywhere. I live on the outskirts of city limits. I hate paying that local sales tax but still get that tax break when items are delivered from LDS (local Depot center).

Jim

Well, this seems to be the time for reminiscence. Not a bad thing in general (excepting my Aunt Rose on the topic of her operations).

Russian culture is a broad and deep thing. My ancestors, Jews in the far West of Russia, also drank tea from small glasses while holding lumps of sugar in their remaining teeth.

And now, I am happy to announce, I have gone full circle (in some respects - I'm not burying my jewelry in case Cossaks raid the shtetl, or hurling bombs at the oppressive authorities [the latter in time, perhaps]): I have just received, compliments of a generous aunt (not Rose), a samovar. A new one meant for the American electric grid not the old-world type which use charcoal and give one lead poisoning. Its urn holds 18 cups (one gallon, one pint) and it's beautiful. All stainless steel mounted on little stylized feet with porcelain knobs and a cute little pot on top. But watch out - it's conducive to pretty heavy doses. The first night I was up at 3:00 a.m. (kind of like finding a new lover). And best of all, it works nicely for small amounts too. I suspect that the only drawback is that it probably won't work for teas which are sensitive to oversteeping, like Darjeeling. I think it's fine for greens if the little pot on top is emptied at each serving and then resteeped when needed. The water temp. is easy to adjust.

Alex: I'm > years. The traditional drink in Caucasus is as follows - Georgians - wine,

What, not vodka? What kind of mutant Russians live there?

My theory is the common cup-made-out-of-phyllo-dough-filled with nuts etc. baklava in the U.S. is a product of laziness and mass-production. My mother makes baklava as do the Azeris, but with pistachios not hazelnuts, with all the laborious layers, and she's from Rumania. Now, another important subject: do Azeris eat halvah?

Beats other common reasons for drooling on one's keyboard.

Best wishes,

Rick.

Perhaps one or two other things I can think of (especially concerning a woman science teacher - yow, yow yow: second in attraction only to librarians). For one thing, she's bound to know where to shoot (third intercostal gap).

Still off topic,

Rick.

Actually, it is not in Asian languages. In Japan, it's litterally "tea's water" or just "tea" when you do it, "the path of tea" when you study it.

I suggest you participate as a guest a few times and talk to the teacher before getting any hand-book or technical description. Anyway, I don't think a Japanese tea meeting has much sense outside the Japanese context.

In a Japanese environment the so-called "tea ceremony" doesn't seem that special. Even if the country has changed and is changing very quickly. The room for Japanese tea is a normal Japanese room (the room from where I am writing now would have been fit for tea...if I had not put my computer and all my things in it), most instruments were normal household instruments used at least till 100 yr ago, the kimono was the normal outfit (till the after-war for most women), the way of sitting down normal (till 20 yr ago, still common nowadays), the sweets are everyday sweets (and were the only type available), macha has been there long before Sencha and other brewed teas. It was really a very normal way to receive guests. And for Japanese of a certain generation and background, it is still as casual as serving a mug with a lipton bag to guests sitting on your sofa (for them, it may be more casual to sit on the floor and whisk macha than bringing a mug from the kitchen and sitting in a sofa). The other day, I went to a traditional old man's house. He received me just as if it was a "tea ceremony". The room was the same, we sat down the same way. His wife had placed decorations (flowers and calligraphy). We sat with the feet perfectly folded under our bums...but we drank iced coffee. I was there for work not for tea and it was not the hour for macha.

So, I think your idea of discipline and following strict rules is false, or at least very exagerated. But I get where you've seen that. Samurai fictions are to Japan what Westerns are to the U.S.

The goal of tea is to "receive guests" and you study to perfect the skills of refined host, for the benefit of your family and friends. So, the emphasis is on preparing all the material details of guests' visit (decoration of the house, the room...), and serving smoothly. Until recently 99% of Japanese people knew how to whisk macha in a bowl before they attend any tea class. So they mostly study to improve their style, learn how to choose season sweets, season flowers, season calligraphy, artistic objects and make an harmonious set. I'd compare it with studying about wine, cooking, cutelry, glasses, etc, in order to be able to compose nice menus for various occasions. The menu is limitated to macha and a sweet, so they focus on all the surrounding.

Art is present in tea meeting. It's about popular arts that were traditional hobbies for many people in Asia. A tea master is an artist, or at least an art teacher, that has knowledge in pottery, flowers, painting, calligraphy and kimonos. A number of tea masters are also specialists in a field like collecting a certain type of antique pottery, kimono styling, etc. Guests are supposed to appreciate the efforts to provide nice objects and harmonise them. Westerners (and young Japanese too) may not know much of all that, so it's hard to appreciate before taking the time to discover. And well, that can't interest everybody.

I think Tanizaki in "Praise of the shadow" made a good description of what it is about. He also explains the practical and esthetic choices made for the Japanese tea.

Kuri

Well, being myself on my mother's side Russian Jewish too, I can tell you that is't a big question who raided whom and who opressed whom. Took me all my life to sort these things out...

The little pot (for concentrated tea that is called "zavarka" in Russian (from zavarivat' - to steep) is called "zavarochny chainik" (chaihik - teapot). I have heard of cardamon in tea from my Baku relatives, but never saw it being dome myself. BTW, the best fuel for samovar was never coal, but furtree cones, old, dry ones. Mother of God, I am drooling again - we need to change the subject!

You are absolutely right - Russians who live in Caucasis are mutants - in a good way if you ask me. Typical Russian alchogolism is not as rampant there. On the subject of baklava, you are righ - its laziness (I do not want to say that first about people in teh country that gave me shelter). The baklava you buy here is not baklava at all. Pistacious, ha? Interesting (drool-drool ...:) Halvah? Do Azeris eat halvah???!!! Are ye kiddn me? My God! Did you have to remind me? Now I need to go find me some....

Alex (May be its time to start using my Riussian name -Sasha, here since we are talking so many things Russian now...)

So, Sasha,

What's a fellow of such obvious high caliber doing in Reno?

Misha

Alex ChaihorskyxAj0d.13878$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com9/10/04

Trying to acquire some spontaneous funding for high caliber ideas? No, wait. That'd be Las Vegas. Ne'er mind.

Derek

(Unfortunately, Gaelic names have no Slavic diminutives.)

I was introduced to the O-tya Do in 1980 by former Japanese prisoners of war in East Siberia and their sons who never saw Japan and whose mothertongue was Russian. Most of them left for Japan in 1950-ies, but some stay. I was a geologist and befriended them after they learned that I studied Wen Yan (ancient Chinese) and some Japanese literature as a hobby. They never mentioned anything about things Japanese before. One wouldn't even know that they are Japanese, if not their names. After they learned who I was and we spent countless evenings at the fire discussing Heyan, Tokugawa, Meiji, they asked me if I would join them for Tea Ceremony.

We walked over a mile and a half along the river upstream from my field camp. There, on the high ground facing the river they put 4 poles on the ground that became a tearoom. The calligraphy was written by fingers on the fresh wet riverbank and everything was so solemn and noble, I had the hair on my back standing up. I will not decsribe the underscribable. I cannot hold tears even now. But anyone who thinks that Bushido is dead should think again. I saw it alive and strong, bold and noble, right in front of me - in the eyes and movements of old, defeated samurai and their Russian born, Russian speaking, half-Russian by blood, sons.

I also must say that before that I already I abandoned my studies of Japanese, of which I have done quite a bit, after I discovered the accounts of what Japanese officers did to civilians (including women and nuns) during WW2 and the Nankin story in China. Not that Russians, who killled millions during Stalin purges or my Jewish coreligionists in Occupied territories or Americans who sold Indians smallpox-infected blankets were any better. But the fact that it was educated, well-borne and well-bred Japanese made a difference for me.

But during these event on the banks of the unnamed river in East Siberia I saw something that transcended time and culture. I am sure that if there are warrior clan culture on some distant planet, they would have similar, if not same, ays of re-inforcing their values. May be in today's Japan the true menaing of O-tya Do silently stepped back into the shadows for political and other reasons. But I have no doubt that it will come back again, as soon as Japan will re-introduce itself to Bushido and other things Japanese. And if one does not believe that it will happen, one has no idea what it is - Japan.

Alex.

That's actually pretty cool.

"We've" never found a way to cure a virus, but we can vaccinate. I think it's a really interesting field of study. Now if "we" could just find a functional HIV vaccine....

Good luck!

OK, this calls for a reference to the Russian Tea HOWTO:

/Lew